Maxime de la Rocheterie on Marie-Antoinette

"She was not a guilty woman, neither was she a saint; she was an upright, charming woman, a little frivolous, somewhat impulsive, but always pure; she was a queen, at times ardent in her fancies for her favourites and thoughtless in her policy, but proud and full of energy; a thorough woman in her winsome ways and tenderness of heart, until she became a martyr."

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

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Wednesday, December 9, 2015

For the Plains Indians at the end of the end of the 19th
century, it must have felt like dying. A way of life that had been
passed down for generations was unraveling, the strands being pulled
from the whole by westward expansion, wars, and disease. The
traditional, nomadic way of Plains life was deemed incompatible with the
burgeoning U.S. government’s vision of a post-Civil War America, and
after a number of battles, most notably at Wounded Knee, tribal
Americans were settled onto reservations, left to move forward into the
future, cobbling together pieces of their past.

It was against this backdrop that an Oglala Sioux named Black Elk
came into the world. Born a couple years before the end of the Civil
War, Black Elk’s childhood took place among traditional practices, his
young adulthood during the tumult of the Reservation Era, and his
adulthood in a post-expansion America. His life spanned more than the
sum of its years.

When he was nine years old, Black Elk suddenly became monstrously
ill. While immobile and unresponsive for a number of days, the young
boy was experiencing a vision of cosmic and spiritual significance.
When he was returned to good health, he pondered the meaning of his
vision in the silence of his heart for the next eight years, finally
sharing it with a tribal medicine man. The elder man was impressed by
the greatness of the vision, and assured Black Elk that it would be good
medicine for the people, leading them toward healing and peace.

While Black Elk did eventually become a medicine man and healer among
the Oglala, he took a side trip first, joining up with Buffalo Bill’s
Wild West Show and touring Europe as one of the performers. At one
point, Black Elk and three other Lakota Sioux were separated from the
troupe and left stranded in Europe. Truly strangers in a strange land,
Black Elk joined up with another wild west show, continued touring
Europe, and learned English while performing for the likes of the Queen
of England. (Read more.)

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